Mapping spectroscopic uncertainties into prospective methane retrieval errors from Sentinel-5 and its precursor

Checa-Garcia, R.; Landgraf, J.; Galli, A.; Hase, F.; Velazco, V. A.; Tran, H.; Boudon, V.; Alkemade, F.; Butz, A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3617-2015

Articles | Volume 8, issue 9

Atmos. Meas. Tech., 8, 3617–3629, 2015

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3617-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Atmos. Meas. Tech., 8, 3617–3629, 2015

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3617-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 9

Research article 08 Sep 2015

Research article | 08 Sep 2015

Mapping spectroscopic uncertainties into prospective methane retrieval errors from Sentinel-5 and its precursor

R. Checa-Garcia et al.

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Sep 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Jan 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

SC C429: 'comments', Ilse Aben, 25 Mar 2015
RC C552: 'Review', Christian Frankenberg, 05 Apr 2015
RC C624: 'Review#2', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Apr 2015
AC C1864: 'Reply to Comments and Reviews', Ramiro Checa-Garcia, 02 Jul 2015

Short summary

The future satellite missions Sentinel-5 and its precursor will monitor methane column average dry air mole fractions. The ambitious accuracy required on regional scales demands a characterization of the systematic error sources in which spectroscopic uncertainties are crucial. This study investigates how methane and water vapour spectroscopic errors propagate into retrieval errors, showing that spectroscopy-induced errors exceed 0.6% in large parts of the world and are regionally correlated.